Sunday, September 25, 2016

Art In Progress

In the last two weeks we have laid the groundwork for several future projects. Students explored a different side of printmaking with rubbings

and made watercolor backgrounds for an upcoming printing.

We took a detour this week and began work on a very special project. The art department is participating in a fundraiser from Square 1 Art. Our Thursday classes will be creating some vibrant oil pastel drawings that you will be able to purchase on tote bags, phone cases, mugs, and several dozen more items. All of the profits will be used to purchase supplies for art class! More information will be sent home in October.

The students planned their drawings with some sketchbook work this week:








Thursday, September 8, 2016

Collographs

Today we made collographs, a print made from gluing three dimensional objects to a base. We created cardboard printing plates. The students cut out their own designs, glued them on a cardboard base, and used paint to create a print.

The younger students used adhesive foams shapes instead, as cutting cardboard can be a little difficult.

This is a great art project to do at home when the recycling gets full or you have too many leftover Amazon boxes from buying all of those books you just had to have for homeschool this year! If you'd like to see how a professional artist creates a collograph, check out this website.

The students also got some time to work in the sketchbooks they decorated last week. Today's sketchbook challenge was to invent their own animal.
While shirts seemed to stay a little cleaner today, please remember to send your child in play clothes. Art can be messy business!





Thursday, September 1, 2016

Welcome to Art!

Welcome to another year of Thursday art class! Today the students jumped right into our first unit, printmaking, by decorating the covers of their sketchbooks with found stamps. If you'd like to learn a little more about printmaking, you can watch this short YouTube video. These classic printmaking methods, while wonderful, are not practical for the art class. We will be exploring some simpler (and less dangerous) methods over the next four weeks.

If you are looking for suggestions of art supplies and books for the home, check out the link to my Pinterest board on the right. I have not listed art histories or biographies, as there are too many fantastic ones to list, but I will link some here from time to time as they relate to the subject we are currently studying.